Declining UK Customer Service Standards

Overview

Alison Bond and Merlin Stone

If we are to believe the headlines, we live in a customer-focused society. The high streets of predominantly service-based economies are dominated by organizations that profess to put customers first. Newspapers, trade magazines, the professional and academic press and the broadcast media are full of case studies of 'service excellence'. Airport bookshelves are stacked with books exhorting managers to transform their service or to deliver the ultimate customer service experience. The UK government is committing big budgets to e-enabling UK society, with the aim of achieving the magic combination of better service to citizens, at lower cost.

The high level of expenditure on customer relationship management (CRM) programmes and systems is testimony to the fact that private sector companies have focused on this as an area of potential competitive advantage. Sadly, the reality is very different. For all the rhetoric and investment, consumers are feeling baffled, berated and betrayed. Customer service is gradually slipping into customer lip service. This chapter shows how bad the situation is. We now know why. What customers are saying reflects the chaos that exists in many companies. Evidence from the first part of this book indicates that many companies that have invested in CRM programmes are going off the rails and wasting money because they are not managing their programmes well. Another recent study in the financial services industry shows that one of the major problems is that the processes companies have for handling customer feedback are often weak and fragmented and are not supported by systems. ^[1]

If companies really want to put their customers first and deliver the service that they profess purchasers deserve, this chapter shows that they need to:

Understand what it is like to be a customer at the receiving end of service, and use all the tools at their disposal to identify what the problems are and when service is not working.
Learn to deliver what they promise, without over-promising. This means being much smarter at marshalling their people and systems to deliver service and tightening up on their processes.
Help employees deliver it. This means investing in improved training and empowering them. It means valuing them.
Educate customers about how they can help themselves: where information is easiest to obtain, and how to complain.
Manage anger at their peril - customers are not stupid. They cannot be treated like children. They know when they are speaking to a call centre, not least because many have friends or family who work in call centres, or they may do so themselves.
Start to treat customer complaints as important matters that need to be settled and avoided in future, not frustrations to be dispensed with.

^[1]Stone, M et al (2002) Customer service, complaints management and regulatory compliance, Journal of Financial Regulation & Compliance, 10 (1) pp 37–54; and Stone, M, Cox, D and Wiltshire, G (2002) Complaints management in financial services, International Journal of Customer Relationship Management, 5 (1) pp 49–58.

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Declining UK Customer Service Standards

Declining UK Customer Service Standards

Overview